Conn Leads International Scientific Organization

Dr. Bruce Conn, has been elected as president of the American Society of Parasitologists, an association of more than one thousand researchers at universities, corporations,…

People in the News · Published 17 years ago · 3 min read

Bruce Conn

Dr. Bruce Conn, has been elected as president of the American Society of Parasitologists, an association of more than one thousand researchers at universities, corporations, and government laboratories around the world, and with hundreds of scientists in nine regional affiliate societies across North America. Scientists in the organization study parasitic diseases of humans, domesticated animals and wildlife. Based in North America, the ASP is made up primarily of scientists from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, but is active across the globe and includes members from 50 countries. Among other things, the ASP publishes the prestigious Journal of Parasitology, sponsors major scientific conferences, and provides scholarships and fellowships to scientists around the world. The last three years, ASP’s annual international conferences have been held in Scotland, Mexico, and Texas, but as president Conn will moderate this year’s conference in Tennessee.

Conn, who leads and works with research groups in many countries, was among the first Americans to become involved deeply in research in former Iron Curtain countries following the Cold War; he was invited to be an organizer with the first major NATO-sponsored conference in eastern Europe (Poznan, Poland) after the Soviet Union collapsed. During the past year, he organized a workshop in Slovakia of the world’s top tapeworm researchers, and co-chaired two symposia in Paris, France, having been invited to organize groups at three consecutive European-wide parasitology congresses.

Conn is on the editorial boards of several leading scientific journals, including, Parasitology Research (Germany), Acta Parasitologica (Poland), and Psyche: A Journal of Entomology (Cambridge, Mass.), and has been a specialist editor for International Journal for Parasitology (Australia). Recently, he has served as an expert consultant for the World Health Organization (based in Switzerland), the Slovak Ministries of Science and Education, and the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has been thesis examiner for the Queenland University of Technology in Australia, and a visiting professor in the doctoral program on medical parasitology at the University of Valencia in Spain. For the past 10 years, he has overseen the parasite research collections at Harvard University. Locally, Conn has chaired the department of biology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, and has served as dean of the school of sciences at Berry College in Rome, Georgia.

Conn is not new to international scientific leadership. In 1998-1999 he was president of the American Microscopical Society, made up of marine biologists and zoologists from around the world. Founded in the 1870’s, AMS is among the oldest international scientific societies based in the U.S. He has served on the executive committee of the Tennessee Academy of Science. Last year he was named to the Fulbright Senior Specialist roster of the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars (U.S. Dept. of State). Conn was born in Cleveland, Tennessee, where he graduated from Lee University before completing the Ph.D. and serving on the faculty at the University of Cincinnati. He was a professor at St. Lawrence University in New York before returning home to the Chattanooga, Tennessee area in 1993.

Conn currently divides his time between homes in Monteagle, Tennessee and Rome, Georgia, with Chattanooga serving as his operational hub. Along with his wife and scientific collaborator, Denise Conn, he is a member of Chattanooga’s Lookout Rowing Club, and the Chattanooga Track Club.